New year offers opportunity to reassess board committees, assignments

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/ban.31204
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Published date: 01 January 2021

© 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC • All rights reserved

View this newsletter online at wileyonlinelibrary.com • DOI: 10.1002/ban

Editor: Nicholas King

Supplement

New year offers opportunity to reassess

board committees, assignments

The start of the year is an opportune time to

implement planned changes at any organization,

experts say, including a reshuffling of board com-

mittees and assignments.

According to Kari Anderson, founder of Incite!

Consulting Group, the start of the fiscal year—

which often coincides with the calendar year for

many nonprofits—is a good time to take stock of

which committees are needed, which aren’t and

which board members should be serving on them.

“Nonprofits have a habit of thinking that the

people currently assigned to committees are where

they should be, and where they want to be,” she

told Board and Administrator. In reality, she said,

the interests of many board members change

throughout their term on the board, and where

they may have been initially a good fit—say, an

accountant being assigned to the finance commit-

tee—is no longer where their passions lie. They

may be very interested and engaged when first

assigned to a committee, but after a while, their

engagement ebbs.

It’s a similar issue when looking at board mem-

ber terms in general, she said—when they first

come onto a board, their energy and enthusiasm

tends to be much greater than years later when

their term is nearing its end and they are looking

at departing from the board.

Not all boards have term limits, nor do all boards

limit the terms served on a particular committee.

But Anderson said it’s smart to have those limits.

“They usually function at a higher level if they

know there’s a set term they will be serving for,”

she said.

The number and purpose of committees

should also be looked at, Anderson said. That’s

because organizations don’t always need the

same committees from year to year, and their

needs also change as organizations mature.

Early in the nonprofit life cycle, for example, a

board might need to have committees that es-

sentially perform the work of the nonprofit, as

staff is usually limited or nonexistent at that

stage. But, as the organization matures and is

able to bring on staff to take on the program-

ming aspects of the nonprofit, those committees

are no longer needed.

And there are definite drawbacks to having too

many committees, she said.

“When there’s too many committees, the board

can be stretched too thin, and there’s just too

much to do,” she said. In such situations, things

can get rushed, important considerations can

get missed and decision-making can be nega-

tively impacted. And committee members may

get frustrated at the time commitment required

when serving on multiple committees—it might

even turn them off to serving on the board

entirely.

On the other hand, there is such a thing as not

enough committees. All organizations, regardless

of their size and where they are in their organi-

zational life cycle, should have an executive com-

mittee, a finance committee, a fund development

committee and a governance committee.

Other committees, such as program, market-

ing, auditing or investment committees, should

January 2021 Vol. 37, No. 5

continued on page 2